Robert Jenson has been talking about the atonement at the Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton. Over at Generous Orthodoxy Kevin Hector has been taking notes.
Jenson insists … ‘that the crucifixion is a sacrifice …an enacted prayer for the forgiveness of sins; in the crucifixion, Christ prays that the Father would forgive our sins, and he enacts this prayer in his self-sacrifice.’
I think we get a little further by saying that it was a labour, rather than a (self-)sacrifice. Christ is at work: he is bringing us into existence, and into life and into freedom, to the point at which we develop our own voices with which we can freely acknowledge this work of God and acknowledge all others as his creatures and be glad about them.
The ‘sacrifice’ approach works when we link it to Jenson’s view that Christ speaks everything into existence, and everything becomes what Christ says it is, when it is vindicated and received by the Father – ‘The resurrection, on this account, is the Father’s acceptance of this prayer for us.’ This is a theology of the Word, or of promise, learned from Luther, that works as a speech-act theory. Christ speaks up for us, intercedes for us (Augustine provides plenty of support for this) and so we come to participate in Christ’s being and action. It is wonderful stuff. You can find something similar in TF Torrance’s Royal Priesthood, neglected, out of print, but absolutely priceless.
‘Christ’s there-and-then work can have an effect on us, accordingly, in the same way that my prayer for others can have an effect on them.’ – there, you see, it is speech that does work – and the work it does is make us holy (which is what terms like sanctification, sacrament, sacrifice all point to).
You can’t beat Jenson for a sound bite:
‘What would we say about God, the world, and humanity if we matched our metaphysics to the Gospel, rather than the Gospel to our metaphysics?’
A life investigating this question would be a life well spent
